When a Man Loves a Weapon (36 page)

“He’s got
bombs
,” she mouthed, low so Sean couldn’t hear.

“I’ll be takin’ the lass up on it, Cormier. Get over to LSU. Be at the north stadium entrance, one hour. No vests, no guns. I’ll text you wit’ instructions.”

“Wait!” she shouted, and she prayed Sean was still listening.

“Aye,
àlainn
, second thoughts? Because you’ll walk to me of your own free will an’ you’ll not be comin’ back from this one.”

“I have to see Nina’s safe, first. That’s the deal. You give her the bomb locations, you trade her for me. We have to know the bombs are defused in time, Sean, or the deal’s off
and you don’t get to rub it in Trevor’s face that you won. You’ll always have lost to him, you got that?”

Sean chuckled, and said, “Oh, I’m goin’ t’ enjoy you,
àlainn
. You remind me of me.”

He hung up and she saw Trevor check with the agents tracking the call.

“Nothing, sir. Unless he’s in the middle of Beirut right now.”

The steady rhythm of the helicopter’s blade chopped above him and Suds stared at the bright glow of the laptop in the dark cockpit, knowing that his system failure was not a mistake. His gut wrenched and crawled. He’d built in a back door, a way to signal his bombs and reset the timers, in case there were many innocent civilians at the plant.

He’d have still blown them, of course.

But he’d built in that fail-safe, a back door, a disarming signal that he hadn’t ever planned to use, to give him total control. As soon as he’d seen the news reports on the first two bombs having been blown—and in the wrong location—he’d tried to activate the signal to control the rest.

Someone had figured out how to override his shutdown signal. The Irish, no doubt, had the money for such a high-tech gadget.

Suds didn’t have much time. Maybe he could get there before they could blow the last three.

“There” being Baton Rouge. The call had come in—any retired bomb squad desperately needed. His ex-military history had put him as an immediate asset to SWAT.

He was on his way. A friend was flying him in via helicopter to Baton Rouge when the tower request came over the headset, changing their course to an LZ, a landing zone, on the LSU campus. It was the next sentence that chilled him: “LZ hot. Terrorists suspected on site, repeat, terrorists suspected on site. Standby on channel three for additional instructions.”

“Roger that,” his pilot answered, and Suds wanted to throw up.

He’d become Chloë’s worst nightmare—the man who figured out how to bypass safety regulations for personal gain. And now, nearly a hundred forty thousand people’s lives were hanging in the balance, because of him.

She’d never forgive him.

He could not live, knowing that.

“It’s a goddamn huge fuckin’ setup, Sean!” Lonan warned, standing just out of arm’s reach. “You got to know that.”

“Sure, I do. And we have a good contingency plan and we have leverage—we have bombs. They don’t know the locations and they can’t do a thing about ’em if they find ’em. Besides, you’ve gotta admire th’ lass for her gumption.”

Lonan had not worked
this
long and
this
hard to throw it all away. He knew Sean was mad as kettles, but he’d never fully believed he’d sacrifice everything just
to get
the girl. Had he deluded himself? Fuck, they could grab her another time. They could blow the final plant, make their money when the prices for those products skyrocketed—they’d bought futures, so as soon as the price went up, they’d sell at a steep profit. Then they’d be gone. They could
always
come back another day when she least expected it.

“You’re losin’ faith, me boy, and that’s a terrible sad thing,” Sean said as he oversaw the loading of the equipment. “And you’re losin’ the fun of it.”

“You’ve got to be kiddin’ me,” Lonan answered, unguarded, and then regretted it at the flash in Sean’s eyes.

Sean paused a moment, checking his weapon and Lonan stood, waiting.

“Lad, I think of you as my baby brother, and I intend to see that you’re taken care of. You’ll be missing Aiden.” Sean looked up, looked him in the eye. “I do, too. We had us some fun.”

“So let’s come back for this woman another day, then,” Lonan argued. “You’ve got t’ see that you can get your revenge later.”

“Sure, I could. I could slip in, wit’out ’em noticin’ and shoot the Fed and strip him of the girl, but it’s not the same.
When that fucking bad business went down, they had cameras on us, and all the world saw that man, shootin’ me, and her, jumpin’ in front of bullets for him. I’m not goin’ t’ slip in, lad, in the dark of the night like I’m scared of ’em. It’s not just gettin’ the girl—it’s rubbin’ his nose in it, like she said. Him knowin’ that his reputation’s ruined on national TV—fuck it, on international TV—that he couldn’t do a damned thing to change the outcome, and him sittin’ at home, alive, fuckin’ paralyzed, knowin’ that I have her and knowin’ that I’ll use her every day in every way I want, to remind him he lost her, ’til I’m tired of her and maybe a good bit longer.”

“You said they’d die, Sean.”

“They will. When I’m good and ready. And you’ll get to do the job.”

“You’re not . . . not in love wit’ her?” he asked, horrified at the thought. Maybe he’d completely misread the gleam in Sean’s eye.

Sean laughed. “She amuses me. She’ll be a fighter, an’ a fine piece of ass, an’ then revenge.”

Lonan nodded, measuring exactly what Sean said. And hadn’t said. He hadn’t said,
no, lad, I’m not in love wit’ the bitch
.

“Time to load up,” Sean said, and he motioned Dox to go retrieve the blonde.

Trevor wasn’t entirely sure where he had made his first mistake. He thought maybe it was telling her, on their way between the apartment and the command center, that MacGreggor would likely ask for her when he called, would want to jerk them around, and for her to keep him on the line—to stall him—so that Izzy’s tracing program could track him.

Not that he’d told her to
fucking
trade
herself
.

But no, maybe the first mistake had been when he got the phone call about the bombs. The Bureau wanted to force Alex to cooperate with the sting and needed Trevor there to rein Alex in and make sure the sting worked, and he agreed to go.

No, that wasn’t it.

Actually, backing up, his first fucking mistake was to have not told her about himself, about his resources, which he could have explained to her while they were naked on a damned tropical island beach somewhere where no one could touch her until his own private army, laws be damned, had hunted MacGreggor down. She’d have been pissed but she’d have gotten over it. Or killed him first, which, at this point, would be
fucking preferable
to the idea of her offering herself as a trade to MacGreggor.

Bile rose in his throat and he choked on the anger, the fury. Moreau wasn’t helping a goddamned thing with all of his shouting at her from three feet away. Riles and his men were barely holding the man off. Moreau would have cuffed Bobbie Faye and taken her to a jail somewhere in a heartbeat, and while that was
extremely
appealing in light of her offer, the fact of the matter was that MacGreggor could get to her anywhere, any time. They’d have to do witness protection in order to hide her, and he knew Bobbie Faye would never go for it.

She didn’t have “run” in her vocabulary.

No, she wouldn’t hide, especially knowing that Sean had Nina and had three bombs somewhere and could, very fucking
easily
, kill thousands of people, just to destroy both Bobbie Faye and himself. MacGreggor’d do it in a heartbeat.

He was having a hard time breathing, his chest was so constricted. The SWAT commander and his team and everyone else had jumped into high gear to assess the tactical situation. Trevor really needed to listen, even though he knew the odds, the impossible odds, against them finding those bombs before MacGreggor had his revenge. She stood in front of him, her big green eyes imploring him to understand. “You realize that he’s lying,” he said, choking on the words, fear driving a stake through his soul. “He’s never going to give you Nina, and he’s never going to give us the location of the bombs, and I
can’t protect you
if you are in a crowd with that maniac.”

She stood so close, he wanted to pick her up and carry her out of there, but she framed his face and her thumbs smoothed against his skin and he laid his hands over hers. She seemed calm . . . oddly, weirdly calm, but then he looked into the nearly fathomless depths of those green eyes and he saw how truly, deeply, hell-hath-no-fury pissed off she was.

“He has bombs, Trevor. You knew it was going to come to this. He’d already made that clear earlier at the racetrack.”

They stood like that for what seemed like a billion heartbeats, and it wasn’t enough time. He enveloped her in his arms, and hers went around his waist, her face buried in his chest, and he hoped to God this wasn’t his biggest mistake of all.

“You
can
not be fucking
serious
,” Cam shouted at Trevor. Bobbie Faye realized he’d been arguing there on the other side of Riles for the better part of the last two minutes. “You’re encouraging her! She doesn’t know the odds, but you do!” Cam finally got enough leverage to push Riles out of his way, and he was
right there
, his hand on her shoulder, pulling her away from Trevor. “She’s not trained, she doesn’t understand that this is
certain death
. Or
worse
. But
you do
.”

“Moreau,” Trevor said, threats rattling in his voice, “move your fucking hand off her. Last time I warn you.”

“Cam.” She turned toward her ex as he pulled, and she grabbed his hand and held it, forcing him to look in her eyes. “He could blow the bombs
right now
. He’s only waiting because he thinks it gets him something. That buys us time—time to find the bombs, time to disarm them. We have to use whatever we can to stop him from killing innocent people. Do you understand me? I’m not asking you for your permission. I’m
telling
you. I’m not going to stand by and be all damsel in distress while
innocent
people die. Whatever it takes to stop him, I’m stopping him. Don’t tell me ‘no’ because I don’t
do
‘no.’ ”

“She does suck at it,” Riles agreed, standing between
their little group and the rest of the state cops (who were not happy campers).

“He will
kill
you, baby.” Cam’s voice ground out jagged and sharp. “He will grab you and if the sadistic bastard doesn’t kill you on the spot, he’ll make sure to do so much damage to you, you’d wished he had.”

“Moreau!” Trevor said, stepping around Bobbie Faye, pushing the man back. “Now.” And before she realized what Trevor was doing, he had hauled Cam out the shop and onto the street.

“Not my fault. Blame free will.”

—God

Moreau tried to fight him on their way out the door, but Trevor held him and propelled him onto the sidewalk. “Think!” Trevor snapped just loud enough to echo off the dark buildings along the street, moving Moreau out of Bobbie Faye’s line of sight. “There are
bombs
out there.”

Bobbie Faye’s ex twisted away as Trevor released him, pushing off hard, but not following through with the punch Trevor was expecting. Even in the dark, outside the tepid glow of the streetlights, it was obvious the cop was ready for battle: muscles bunched, fists clenched, defensive stance, his chest heaving with heavy, adrenaline-soaked fury.

“We’re running out of time!” Trevor said. “I don’t fucking want her to do this any more than
you
do, but you’re hurting her.
She’s already made the offer
. We have to think tactically! Now!”

“You can’t do this,” Moreau ordered, his voice harsh, knife-edged. “You just fucking
can’t
. She’ll be dead.” He paced, gestures sawing the night around them. “Do you really think letting her do this is going to stop him? That he’ll abide by his agreement? Because if you do, you’re a bigger fucking fool than I thought.”

“No, it’s not going to stop him!” Trevor exploded, then took a second to drag in his control from some distant recess of what used to be his professional ability. This was the last thing he wanted to have to do, but he’d do it. “She needs you
right now. Hell,
I
need you right now—get your fucking head in the game.”

Moreau’s eyes narrowed and he breathed hard, itching to swing at Trevor.

“She
needs
you,” Trevor said again. The clock was ticking and he had to get through to the man. “Her friend. For God’s sake, you don’t have time to fight me. You have to support her.”

“You’re not the only one who loves her.” Moreau’s words cut harsh, staccato, jabbing the air, his fists clenched.

“I know that,” Trevor bit out. Heat lightning flashed in the night sky and the planes of Moreau’s face stood in sharp relief against the hollow shadows of his eyes and Trevor thought of old samurais, swords drawn. “I
know
that,” he offered again, quiet, his own chest tight with the effort.

Seconds ticked by.

“You could stop her,” Moreau said, abruptly, as if all the fight had gone out of him. Then softer, aching, lower, his voice cracking, “You could, Cormier. She’d listen to you. She’d stop if you told her to.”

He heard the heartbreak in that statement. Heard the man’s voice shake, and it made him pause as Moreau scraped a hand across his face and Trevor turned a little, giving him a semblance of privacy.

“God knows I want to stop her,” he told the man, matching his honesty. “I’d rather die than lose her, but if Nina gets killed or people die, she’ll be destroyed. The toll of her killing Mitch last time . . . God, I’ve been watching her hurt so much. She was just starting to come back from that, but if she loses people because she didn’t try to help? The woman we both love will be
destroyed
, Cam. Is that what you want?”

“Cam’s right,” Riles murmured as Bobbie Faye snapped her attention from where Trevor and Cam disappeared into the night. “I know you ride the Crazy Bus,” he continued, “but this is certifiable.”